


bury my heart

by jdphoenix



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Thor: The Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no Frigga now to console her nor any hope to cling to. She saw the body herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bury my heart

There is a feast to mark the Convergence, to celebrate Asgard’s victory over her foes. Their saviors are not in attendance (Heimdall’s quiet smiles are more than sufficient indication of why). However, their absence has not dampened the masses’ mood and Sif is reminded of another feast not so long ago. There is no Frigga now to console her nor any hope to cling to. She saw the body herself.

There was no room for hope on the barren fields of Svartalfheim. She had been sent along with her coconspirators to help gather up the remains of the Aether and there he lay: cold and grey and undeniably dead.

No one had warned her.

She wonders as she passes through the deserted palace halls if she can truly feel Heimdall’s gaze upon her now or if it is only the memory playing tricks on her. He watched her then, amid the others’ morbid and mourning talk for their once-friend. If her brother expected her knees to buckle or her lungs to cry out, more the fool he. (Her body is too well trained an instrument to betray her thus.)

They gathered the body up as well as the Aether and returned both to Odin. One he sent immediately away for safety’s sake and the other…

There was no funeral for Loki, no days of mourning as when he fell into the abyss. He is gone as if he never was.

But he _was_. He _lived_. And there is part of her she thinks will forever be convinced he must live still.

Memory, like a blade lovingly sharpened, brings him to life again every day. He sits on the steps in the training yard, lazily critiquing form. He walks the aisles in the library, his long fingers stained with ink. He hides behind every pillar, waiting to jump out at her. He runs through the gardens, his laughter floating on the breeze.

It is there she finally stops, amid the trees and far from the bright lights of the feast. The rich scent of Frigga’s carefully groomed flowers is as heady as any wine. Sif allows it to fill her up a moment as she listens for movement. There are no lovers hidden in the shadows, nor did she expect there to be. The air is too chill and the night too young.

She reaches out for the nearest tree. Was it from these branches that she fell (was _pushed_ ) as a child? Or was it here that she retaliated and nearly killed an heir to the throne? It could be any of a hundred trees in the gardens and it doesn’t matter besides. She has not come all this way for a tree.

Carefully she kneels, uncaring for the way the grass and earth will stain her fine dress. She thinks humorlessly that it will match her hands well enough as her fingers dig into the soft ground. The soil is cold, leeching the warmth from her skin. She does not dig far, only a hand’s length, but by the time she is done her fingers feel brittle the way they did in the air of Jotunheim. They twist in the blades of grass, greedy for what little warmth the greenery offers as she presses her palms to the ground on either side of her hole and bends her face down to the hollow.

Into the emptiness she unleashes her heart. Her knees, already upon the ground, feel weak beneath her. Her lungs scream until they burn. Tears fall so freely she thinks the hole will overflow. She is reduced to shaking sobs and it is only centuries of self-control that keep her from rolling into the bushes and giving her sorrows to the sky.

She digs her fingers like claws into the grass, gripping it to keep her from doing just that. She buried her heart beneath her armor on the fields of Svartalfheim and now she will bury it forever in the royal gardens of Asgard.

When it ends - she has no idea the time that passes - she covers over the hole as if it were never there and stumbles back to her rooms. She is in no mood for feasting.

 

 

From his seat upon the throne of Asgard, the man calling himself Odin watches.

 

 


End file.
